


Pastel on Paper

by thestuffedalligator



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, Multi, Perc'ahlia children, Romantic Fluff, Spoilers for The Folding Halls, Vox Machina Mighty Nein Crossover, i guess you could call it that, kind of crack ship?, only one (1) of Vex's kids are straight, the de rolos are suspicious bastards
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-17 03:51:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21047846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestuffedalligator/pseuds/thestuffedalligator
Summary: Vesper Elaina de Rolo, twenty years old, is sitting on the clock tower about thirty feet in the air next to the automaton Trinket, when she sees a very pretty and very loud tiefling girl





	Pastel on Paper

**Author's Note:**

> Officer I swear I don't know how this happened. I was just making headcanons for Perc'ahlia children and this fic jumped out of nowhere

There was a space on the clock tower about thirty feet up, next to the automaton Trinket and out of the wind.

Looking up at it, most people dismissed the spot as impossible to reach. Looking behind it, Vesper Elaina de Rolo spotted that if she jumped out of her window, slid down the buttress, ran along the broad roof of the main hall, leapt, grabbed that gargoyle there, used her momentum to swing up to _ that _ gargoyle _ there _, pulled herself up the brickwork, slid down the roof tiles on the other side and swung her legs over the parapet - and if she managed to keep her glasses on through the whole thing - she had a spot where she could see out over the front wall and sketch to the soothing sound of the clock tower.

She wasn’t allowed to, technically. But if her father didn’t move several tons of architecture to prevent her from doing it, was she really forbidden from doing it? Was she _ really _?

Besides, she liked working to the sound of the clockworks. It calmed her mind and helped her focus on the people milling about in the square below, and so long as she remembered to duck once an hour to avoid being mauled by a clockwork bear it was absolutely worth it. She did some of her best sketching this way, people watching.

Right now, for example, a woman in a blue dress was leading a band of tourists across the square and into the castle. Vesper studied them all as they passed underneath the clock tower through the big arched doors. They looked Xhorhasian, going off of their clothes; two humans, but mostly other races, a half-orc, a halfling, a huge pink and grey thing that she didn’t recognize, and-

She raised her eyebrows. A tiefling girl in a green dress who was the most stunning shade of blue that Vesper had ever seen on a person. She _ glowed _ against the snow, and snowflakes glittered in her dark hair like distant stars. A pretty, round face, and a solid, muscled body. And the way the dress moved, like she was dancing as she walked...

Vesper found that her hand was already moving pastel across the page of her sketchbook, taking in the shape of her horns, the cut of her bob, the shape of her dress. She looked at the pile of pastels next to her. Shit, did she have one that was the right shade of blue? Why did she only have two shades of blue? Which shade was the tiefling closer to, teal or sapphire?

She looked down to check and saw that the tiefling girl was looking right up at her.

Her mother had said that when people talk about “fight or flight,” they forget that there’s a third option: freeze. She felt her muscles scream at her to roll back behind the parapet, to hide, and found that she couldn’t move from her spot. Snowflakes fell on her face, tiny pinpricks of cold that melted immediately, and all she could do was stare.

To her horror, the tiefling girl smiled and waved. “I SEE YOU, MISS CLOCK LADY!” she yelled. Her voice had a high, sing-song accent. People turned in surprise. “YOU LOOK VERY NICE TODAY!”

Self preservation suddenly pulled on her muscles hard, and she fell backwards against the cold roof tiles. She heard some laughter, which eventually faded, and soon she was left alone with the sound of the clock tower.

She stared up at the sky, an expanse of grey-white clouds that ran on forever. She could swear that snowflakes were evaporating on her face, skipping melting and going right to steam.

Teal. She was definitely teal blue, not sapphire. She reached for her pastels, selected the appropriate wedge of blue, and kept drawing.

The clock struck eleven. The automaton Trinket swung out a paw. Vesper ducked under it in time.

Someone yelled from the square below, “HEY, CUCKOO!”

Vesper looked down from the parapet and saw a skinny young quarter-elf with black hair in an undercut.

She scowled at him. “YOU KNOW I HATE THAT NAME, PERCY.”

He grinned. “COME DOWN AND FIGHT ME, THEN.”

She huffed, tucked her hair back into her ponytail, stepped up onto the parapet, and jumped. Midair she turned in on herself, tumbled forward across the cobblestones, and only felt mildly bruised from the acrobatics.

She uncurled herself at her brother’s feet and looked up - and up again. She looked down. She gave him a glare that traveled from his high-heeled boots and up into his eyes. “How dare you be taller than me,” she said.

“That’s just biology.”

“Yeah, but the _ boots_?”

He shrugged with mocking innocence. “I have to lock in my position of Alpha Sibling somehow!” he said. “What if you have a growth spurt tomorrow and grow an extra-” He glanced down at the heel of his boot. “Three, three-and-a-half inches overnight?”

“And what if I take you out at your kneecaps?”

“With your eyesight? I’ll be fine.”

She pushed her glasses back up her nose with her middle finger. “Dink,” she said.

“Cuckoo,” he said, grinning. “Now come on. I’ve been told to get you to Aunt Cass’s office.”

“Oh _ gods _,” Vesper moaned as they strode off into the castle. “What did we do now?”

“Shock horror, I don’t think it has anything to do with us. We’ve got visitors from Wildemount. Aunt Cass is having an audience with a couple of them now.”

Vesper opened her mouth to say, “That’s ridiculous, tonight’s the Night of Ascension, she never takes a private audience today,” when a memory fell into the slot in her brain. Blue dress and a crowd of tourists. Oh yes. “Allura?”

Percy nodded. “She’s asked Mom and Dad to be there, and Mom’s asked us to be there too.”

Vesper sighed. Not tourists, then. Not a lot of mercenaries made their way this far north unless they were desperate, and if Allura was vouching for them then of _ course _ they were going to be granted an audience.

A tiny part of her brain remembered the tiefling girl and found herself wondering if that meant she’d see her again.

There were two Riflemen posted outside the huge, dark doors that led into her aunt’s office. One clicked her heels together when she saw the two approach and opened the door.

Inside, behind the huge desk, was Aunt Cassandra, steepling her fingers with an imperious look, flanked on both sides by her mother and father and four of the Whitestone Riflemen. In front of the desk was Allura, a half-orc and a human woman. The half-orc was dressed in leather armor with a long dark cape, and the human woman - heavily tanned skin and more than a few scars up and down her exposed arms - wore a blue, sleeveless coat with gold details.

When they entered the room the half-orc was saying, “-in the course of our-” At the sound of the door closing, he looked back with surprise. Vesper saw that he had a scruffy, dark beard, and that his skin was mottled in different shades of green.

Her father tilted his neck slightly. Vesper and Percy shot each other a Look, and the two silently parted and stood in the far two corners of the room, Vesper on the right, Percy on the left.

Her father nodded. “My children,” he said. “Vesper Elaina de Rolo, my eldest daughter, and Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo the Fourth, my eldest son.” He waved a hand. “Do go on.”

The half-orc glanced back and forth between the two corners and the desk in front of him. Vesper knew this game. It was like chess on a grander scale; you kept your opponent on edge by not letting them see all the pieces at once. It made weak fools nervous, and a nervous fool would jump in one direction rather than all three at once. It was the game of suspicious bastards, and her family had mastered it ages ago.

The woman in the blue and gold coat jabbed the half-orc in the ribs, snapping him out of his daze. “Ah - yes - in the course of our work, I fear that we’ve burned bridges out of some rash judgements and poor choices. We’re no longer considered friends of the Empire, we’ve lost favour with the Bright Queen-”

“Got banned from a couple libraries,” the woman added.

The half-orc muttered something that sounded like, “I thought we weren’t going to mention the libraries.” Vesper smiled.

The woman straightened. “It’s..._ difficult _ for people of action to pay attention to the smaller details of their world and their realities,” she said. “I wish I could say it would be the last of it, but it’s a difficult world, and we are people prone to action. All we want is to make a fresh start and to forge stronger alliances than ones that have failed us before.”

Her mother and father shared a Look. Aunt Cass only looked impassive. The half-orc kept shooting glances back at Vesper and Percy.

Finally Aunt Cass said, “What would you need?”

“Resources to study,” the woman said quickly. “We’re dealing with a wholly alien element, and we’d like to know as much about it as possible.”

“And someplace to stay for a while,” the half-orc said. “If it were at all possible for you to give us a discount on rooms at a local inn, that’d be much obliged.”

The woman frowned and cleared her throat. “And a friend of mine really wants to study your guns, and-slash-or get more ammo for a pistol she found because she used her last round to shoot me in the ass.”

Her father closed his eyes with a pained expression while her mother seemed to be trying very hard not to laugh.

Aunt Cass considered this. “Most of this sounds agreeable,” she said. “However, I should like a moment alone with my council. You may wait in the hall.”

Vesper raised an eyebrow at her father as the human and the half-orc turned and walked back through the doors. He nodded, and Vesper pulled her brother out into the hall behind them just before the huge doors closed.

The human and the half-orc stood in the silence of the hallway. There was a sharp “_Psst_!” down the right hall, and probably came from one of the two figures peeking out from around the corner. Vesper recognized them as the halfling woman and-

Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit, she wasn’t ready for this, she was _ not _ ready for this-

The blue tiefling girl ran up to the woman and the half-orc. “How’s it going in there?” she hissed.

The half-orc sagged with relief. “Gods, it’s freaky as _ hell _ in there! I thought I was going to wet my pants, I swear-”

The human woman had looked back and noticed Vesper and Percy. She reached across and slapped the half-orc on the arm to shut him up.

There was a long, tense moment as the two parties stared at each other.

“Hey,” the halfling croaked.

The human woman said, “Uh - yeah, this is-” She flailed a hand. “I’m sorry, I’ve already forgotten your names.”

Percy smiled sunshine. He clicked his heels together and bobbed into a bow. “Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo the Fourth. And this,” he said, gesturing to Vesper, “is Cuckoo.”

“_Vesper_,” Vesper said quickly, kicking Percy in the shin. “Vesper Elaina de Rolo.”

The woman quirked an eyebrow. “And it’s your job to stand in corners to freak visitors out?”

Vesper shrugged. “Something like that. The last time we welcomed a foreign power in blindly, the royal family was murdered by vampires.”

The woman nodded. “Fair,” she said. “Totally fair.”

Percy started chatting with the half-orc pleasantly - because this was part of the game too, this was Good Noble, Bad Noble - and Vesper looked over at the tiefling girl. This was so much _ worse _ than seeing someone from thirty feet above them, now she was entirely too close, and entirely too real.

Her eyes - violet eyes, Vesper noticed now - widened with realization. “Oh!” she said, snapping her fingers. “You’re Miss Clock Lady!”

The chatting conversation died. Percy turned with shock and delight at the acquisition of a new nickname.

Vesper stared up at the ceiling and prayed, for an instant, that the Briarwoods would come back and murder her, then and there.


End file.
